Instantor's Blog

The True Meaning of Working at Instantor

What does it mean to be a part of something bigger? To us, it means working together as a team towards one mutual goal. In our case, that goal is to allow financial organisations to help more, at less risk.

On our quest towards financial inclusion, occasionally we encounter certain challenges – challenges that are sometimes resolved by the fact that we are such a diverse and multicultural team, and sometimes caused by it.

Not all Heroes Wear Capes

“I have the need to express how proud I am of the whole team and all the big and small things they do during crazy times: off hours, from the movie theater, while on a date and sometimes parked by the road with the laptop on the hood of the car. Let me illustrate it for you, using a couple of recent scenarios:

On one recent occasion we experienced technical issues with a client at 9pm and as security and efficiency is essential for us, we got on it immediately. As we were working to fix the problem, the system of another client stopped working – just 30 minutes later.

Image: Esteban Lopez

One message was sent to the fixing channel and it got immediate attention from the whole team. The first client’s issue was solved in a total of two hours and the second client’s in only 30 minutes. All the different departments did their part to reach a solution quickly and effectively. I’m proud to be part of the team.” – Dario Boros, Head of Data Aggregation Platform, Instantor

Diversity: The art of Thinking Independently Together

Here at Instantor we value teamwork, determination and being passionate about our goals. This is apparent in everything we do.

Recently, our CTO – Helene Stafferöd Westerlund – held a presentation for a Japanese business delegation at a FinTech conference hosted by Findec and Embassy House. She discussed our products, our business model and how we help financial institutions to make fairer and more responsible credit risk decisions. She also talked about the value that diversity brings together our team everyday.

The talk was very well received and not only did the audience have 40 minutes worth of enthusiastic follow up questions afterwards, but 17 of them were lined up to have a chat with Helene.

We’re aware that we have a good product on the market, but we wouldn’t have been where we are today if it weren’t for our diverse and driven team – and our determination to truly value that. With team members from 13 countries we’re more than aware of all the good things that come with having a multicultural group of passionate people who are working together to set goals and go after them.

Image: James Wainscoat

There are also times when we get to experience the more humorous side of diversity, with language barriers potentially being the most obvious one:

“I had just started working at Instantor and was having lunch with our product owner, Sasha, who was currently one of just a few other women in the office. We realised we both had dogs and started talking about the fact that they were both small dogs, of about the same weight.

Me, trying to bond over this coincidence, suggested they should meet. To my surprise, she just stared at me and kept on cutting her food in silence. Some time went by before she realised I didn’t actually suggest Tafi and Dante should MATE, but in fact MEET. I’m from New Zealand, by the way...” – Raiha Buchanan, CMO, Instantor

Inside Information

Working for Instantor doesn’t only mean that you have a passion for the FinTech industry and a strong work ethic. The average Instantorian also has a good sense of humour; big dreams; strong personality traits and exciting hobbies.

Want to get a taste of who we are? These are some of the answers we had to the following questions:

What is #1 on your bucket list?

“Mending reindeer fences for two weeks in the open wild in Lapland.”

“To get a good night’s sleep.”

“Make the world better place.”

“To fix that shelf at the entry hall...”

“To climb Mont Blanc in 2019.”

“Move to Patagonia to become a self sufficient hunter-gatherer, start a tribe and avoid ending up like the Into the Wild-guy.”